


meek in the face of you

by faedemon



Series: youth becomes you, i swear it [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Gen, Humanstuck, POV Vriska Serket, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Unhealthy Kismesissitude, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Crush, vriska realizes her actions have consequences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23121262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faedemon/pseuds/faedemon
Summary: Vriska likes Tavros, sort of, except its the kind of like where she wants to push and wants him to push back, and Tavros doesn't push back. He takes it, and takes it, and she just keeps pushing, until one day she looks at him and realizes they're not on the same page.Can be read standalone from the series, but makes multiple references to the first fic in it, so you might want to read that one first.
Relationships: Tavros Nitram ♥ Vriska Serket, Tavros Nitram/Vriska Serket, Terezi Pyrope ♦ Vriska Serket, Terezi Pyrope/Vriska Serket, Vriska Serket ♠ Dave Strider, Vriska Serket ♠ Tavros Nitram, Vriska Serket/Dave Strider, but - Relationship, that's not a real relationship its onesided on both sides and unhealthy
Series: youth becomes you, i swear it [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1549204
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	meek in the face of you

Before the sleepover, when she’d left black lipstick on Dave’s willing mouth, Vriska had been eyeing Tavros Nitram with spades in her eyes.

He wasn’t really _friends_ with most of them. He was friends with Gamzee, maybe, before the dude broke Nepeta’s wrist and Karkat cut him a new one. He’d tagged along with Aradia back when they’d LARP together, but Vriska and Terezi both knew that Aradia was the one running the show, then. Tavros had just been along for the ride. That’s why what happened to him did, and though Terezi stopped talking to her for a while, and guilt still runs in the tremors of Vriska’s bad hand, for the most part, all of it was in the past.

Vriska would hesitate to say she liked Tavros, but it was sure fun to poke his buttons, make him bend and bend and bend until he puffed up and told her off, eyes blazing with a determined fire so foreign, alien on his meek little face. It was thrilling, to know she’d done that, she’d brought him to that point.

No, Vriska didn’t like him, but she _wanted_ Tavros in the same way she saw John want her best friend: this hungry, possessive thing that said _you infuriate me. I’ll show you infuriation._ Vriska wanted Tavros to push her back. She wanted him to find her buttons and press, she wanted that give and take.

But Tavros was timid, and Vriska was a whirlwind, and he admired her in a pure, blush-red way that made her blood curdle. He was a lost puppy, trailing behind her, when she wanted him to try and push his way in front. He was _weak_ , and he wouldn’t let her beat it out of him.

Maybe it started even back when they were LARPing, when she saw him first, this scrawny tagalong, and heard his sweet-faced passion and thought _you could be so much more_.

As it is, she’s Vriska, and her emotions fill her so brightly she’ll burst if she doesn’t let them go, and at school one day in the band room—because of course he’s in band, the freak—she kisses him, pitch, pitch, pitch.

He kisses back, sort of, but it’s slow and sweet and when she bites, he draws away. They stare at each other with equal intensity on opposite wavelengths, and when Tavros registers it, the hunger that distinguishes her like from his, he shies away.

“Uhh, Vriska,” he stutters, rolling his wheelchair back, making a music stand clatter when he knocks into it. “What was… that for?”

She looks at him. He’s trembling, confused, though there’s still that weird adoration lingering in the corners of his eyes. She takes a step forward, and he shrinks back further.

“Nothing, nerd,” she says, and leaves him there.

The sleepover is that night. Vriska goes to Terezi’s beforehand, since they’re both going to be dropped off by her older sister, and while Terezi gets ready Vriska lays on her bed and cries.

Not a lot of people are allowed to see Vriska cry, but when you’re one of them, you see it in all its Vriska glory: loud, unabashed sobs clawing their way out of her throat, tears pressed into a pillow not her own, runny mascara smeared into the pillowcase.

When she’s cried herself out, Terezi kneels by the bed, reaching out to rub Vriska’s back, and says, “So, he rejected you, then.” Vriska hits her with the tearstained pillow.

“No, bitch,” she groans, flipping over onto her back. “It’s just…”

Terezi gets up and joins Vriska on the bed, sliding in next to her. “Just what?”

A flash of him, trembling, small before her enormity, flashes through her mind. He’d been scared, in the face of her, and Vriska doesn’t care that he’s a coward but she’d never seen that fear pointed at her. He’d been afraid of everything around them, but not her. Now he is, if only a little, if only buried beneath his strange, red affection, and she doesn’t know what to do with it.

“He was scared of me,” she says, and Terezi winds an arm around her waist, tugging her close.

“He has been since you pushed him out of the tree, Serket. Haven’t you seen it?”

It ends up that she isn’t out of tears to shed. Vriska chokes on it as she responds, “No.”

It’s not that she’s devastated, because she isn’t. But she sort of is, because Tavros had been her project, a plaything, and she wanted—she wanted so _much_ from him, and he never delivered, and she thought if she just kept _pushing_ —

Except he’s still meek, and he blushes red, and everything she’s got for him is coal black.

They show up on Karkat and Nepeta’s doorstep, and Nepeta’s mom lets them in. Terezi takes Vriska’s arm in hers before leading them in to the kitchen where Nepeta and Karkat and the twins and John already wait.

Vriska pointedly doesn’t make eye contact with Rose, lacing her fingers with Terezi’s and squeezing, because she knows what she’d find there. She and Terezi always seem to _know_ , and Terezi had a front-row seat for this, but all Rose has to go on is red-rimmed eyes.

(Rose makes eye contact with Terezi, though, and gets a shake of the head, and she lets it go).

By the end of the night, Vriska’s left lipstick on Dave’s chin, given love (?) advice to John, and her gut has flip-flopped between guilt and gratification so much she thinks she might be sick with it. Guilty is her heart when she thinks of Tavros, what she’d wanted him for, and yet the air around her is electric. This sleepover is a movie-perfect teenage scene, and she kisses a boy that makes her want to bite, and mock-fights over him with _Karkat_ , of all people.

And she’s—she’s not ready, not yet, to admit that Tavros was her fault, for hurting him first and leading him on after, so she’ll shove it away until Terezi tugs it back out, raw and ready to be dealt with.

**Author's Note:**

> hey! thanks for reading. leave a comment, i appreciate them! :>


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